Mia Love recently won the GOP nomination for the Fourth Congressional District in Utah. She will face incumbent Democrat Jim Matheson in the November election. What is unique about this election is that Love is trying to become the first Black woman to be elected to Congress as a Republican in the history of the United States.
Love is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother cleaned houses and her father was a custodian and drove a school bus. The family later moved to Connecticut and Love earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the University of Hartford. She then converted to Mormonism and moved with her husband to Utah. In 2004, she was elected to the city council in Saratoga Springs, Utah. Six years later, she was elected mayor of the town.
Here is a video of Mia Love discussing her candidacy.
Update: Mia Love lost to the Democratic incumbent by less than 3,000 votes.
Mia Love is to be admired and congratulated for her accomplishments. Apparently she has had an upbringing that makes it possible for her to subscribe to the ideas she expouses and to reach for greater things. Not knowing the history of her family in either this country or in Haiti, it is difficult to have an objective opinion of her successes. I will say, however, that she is the exception rather than the rule concerning the opportunities and freedoms accessible to the great majority of people of African descent in this country. People in the United States who are the victims of post-traumatic slavery syndrome and generations of systemic oppression, otherwise know as racism, on a whole do not have the life outcome choices that Ms. Love has enjoyed. Hopefully, some day she will come to realize that the lofty words of the founding documents initially were not meant to apply to everyone. Particularly, they were not meant to apply to blacks, women, and the poor. Let us hope that her good fortunes will not blind her to the needs of the poor, the unscholarly, the common people, many of whom are largely invisible to those who consider themselves the so called “middle class” of which Ms. Love is likely seen to be a member.
America is rapidly transforming from a race-based society to a class-based society. If it completes that transformation, it will no longer be capable of being a democracy. It would seem that Ms. Love identifies with the “middle class”, perhaps with ambitions to become a member of the “upper class.” Words in the founding documents originally applied to the “middle” and “upper classes.” They represented ideas of aspiration. Most significantly, they represented reality neither then nor now. Let us hope that Mia Love will not get lost in the words and learn what America really is, a work in progress in danger of disappearing. If she is successful in becoming a member of Congress, I hope that she will come to understand that she is there to serve all of the people, not just the ones who, like her, are fortunate. Remember the old saying, Ms. Love, as you consider those less fortunate, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Well said!
I visited Haiti for the first time last summer and can ‘somewhat’ understand how Ms Love has come to embrace Mormonism and the Republican Party. The poverty and dysfunction in her home country is perverse and endemic.
There is a lot of political corruption in Haiti and I found the population generally to be self versus community oriented (there were some exceptions, but this was my general experience and observation).
Personally, I feel a Black person that truly knows their history would find it difficult to embrace the above named institutions.
I wish Ms Love success in keeping Black interests close at heart.
Sincerely,